Looking at buying a used Sprint phone, any concerns?

[I4AT]

This will be the first phone I've ever bought second hand. Just wondering what I should look out for.

He says the ESN is clean, so I guess verifying that is the first thing I need to do. But if Sprint says the ESN is good and I activate the phone, what happens if the guy I bought it from reports it stolen like a week later? Is this a known scam/issue?

Also, since the phone is used, will there be an activation fee? Or is that only for brand new phones that have never been activated before?

And lastly, I'm not the main account holder, so will that be a problem? I'm on a family plan as an added line, once I buy the phone can I just call customer service and ask them to deactivate my current phone and activate the new one? Or will they only speak to the account holder? Can any of this be done online?

 

[rudeguy]

Only the account holder or authorized user can make changes including changing ESN's.

There won't be an activation fee since you aren't adding a new line. There may be some made up fee that you can ask the rep to wave.

If they say the phone is clean, that's the best you can do. How much are you looking at spending on this phone?

 

[I4AT]

It's a $60 phone, so basically all I can do is verify the ESN is clean before handing over the money, but there's still a risk of it being reported lost/stolen once it's activated on my account?

I e-mailed the guy to see if he'd provide the ESN number before we meet so I can call and verify it, while I have the CSR on the phone I guess I can ask what happens if he reports it lost or stolen. If there's any risk involved I guess I'll just pass, a new phone wouldn't be worth losing $60.

 

[boomhower]

The best way to do it is in person at the Sprint store. Outside of that verifying the ESN is clean is all you can do. If he reports it stolen after he sells it to you there isn't a lot you can do other than hope karma bites him in the ass. I have bought several Sprint phones off eBay and forums without issue. I wouldn't buy on of craigslist that wasn't activated with the seller in store.

 

[I4AT]

Just a little update, I bought the phone and got it activated, it was pretty simple with the PIN number from the account head. They didn't ask for any personal information like a social or anything crazy like that so I was able to activate it myself over the phone.

If you're like me and you've never activated a phone with Sprint before all you need to do is have the MEID for the new phone in DEC format at the ready. You can find it on a sticker under the battery. I made the mistake of writing down the HEX number which they refused to use, so I'm not really sure why it's there to begin with.

You'll also need to be calling from a third phone, you can't use your current phone or the one you want activated even though some of them can still dial out to customer service. The number as of this post is 888 211 4727, or if you're borrowing a phone from a friend/family member who also uses Sprint you can just dial *2.

And lastly, you won't need your current phone at all. I assumed that I would need to give them the MEID for my old phone so they could deactivate it. So after going through all the steps, pulling the battery, turning the phone back on and dialing out etc., when the rep said ok you're good to go, I was like oh shit... guess what? Yeah, I'm a total phone newb. The process is probably a lot easier online with your Sprint account, but I didn't have any of that information available at the time.

But anyways, regarding the phone itself I picked up a Palm Pre. The asking price was $60, which was already pretty good compared to the current going rate. I told the guy I'd do $59 by money order so I could have some record of a transaction, or I'd do $50 by cash. I've seen broken Palm Pres go for about that much on Ebay, and ones with bad ESN's still have some value I'm guessing because they can be flashed to Cricket or another provider. So I figured even if I get screwed I can recoup most of my loss, and if he's legit I get a decent deal. He said $50 cash was fine, which I took to be a bit of a flag that something might be wrong, but it's activated and everything is working well, aside from pretty shit battery life but I think that's normal.

Now I'm looking into installing Govnah which is a bit like CPUID or EasyTune for on the fly clock speed adjustment. I'm hoping that will take care of my battery life problems. I'm not sure, but I believe Palm still hasn't implemented any voltage/frequency scaling on this phone despite the fact that it's got a Cortex A8 which is capable of it.

I won't be overclocking any as I find the phone to be snappy enough at default settings. It's pretty amazing what this thing can do with a 500mhz processor. I can only imagine what the next HP Palm device will be able to do with a 1ghz+ A8 on WebOS, or even the A9's when they hit the market. I'm coming from a Sanyo SCP-8400 which was a clamshell phone that's so old it had an antenna. I remember when I first got that thing I was like, what do I need a phone with a color screen and a camera for? The phone I had before that was monochrome and did everything I needed it to lol.